


habits of my heart

by elossa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Not Epilogue Compliant, One-Sided Attraction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, lbr nothing i write is ever epilogue compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-10
Updated: 2016-01-10
Packaged: 2018-05-13 00:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5686900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elossa/pseuds/elossa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were two things Pansy Parkinson expected to be good at when she graduated Hogwarts: Potions and sex.</p><p>Needless to say, she isn’t good at either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	habits of my heart

There were two things Pansy Parkinson expected to be good at when she graduated Hogwarts: Potions and sex.

Needless to say, at the ripe old age of eighteen, she isn’t good at either.

* * *

Pansy wakes up in the cellar of a dingy cellar of a bar in Hogsmeade with the words _Voldemort has fallen_ ringing through the air. She looks around to find Theo – ever the saint – bringing her and Daphne two steaming cups of tea. They thank him.

There is a chatter that fills the air with music that reminds Pansy of the days where the war was just as misguided notion spoken by the same Harry Potter that put the devil in her nightmares to rest. There was no hushed sounds, no ominous silence that conquers the air and is thick like smog. She felt almost as if she was a child again, just getting off the Hogwarts Express with Draco and Blaise, except she can feel her hands trembling and tears battling to leave her eyelids.

“You alright, Pans?” Daphne asks.

Pansy braves a nod, because she’s not dead, her friends aren’t dead, and from what she’s heard Draco isn’t dead and her father is alive. Really, she has nothing to worry about except for the estate being confiscated at the Parkinson fortune being confiscated and her father probably looking at Azkaban and the Dementor’s Kiss. Probably both.

She spends the rest of the day listening, paying attention, learning to notice the little nuances that Tracey Davis had spent so much time talking about. She learns about the beauty lying hidden in the brushing of hands, smiles, Ginny Weasley rushing into the bar only to see if Blaise was alright – a fact which brightens his face, and he doesn’t notice because he doesn’t quite know he’s in love with her yet – and, of course, members of the Ministry interrogating her on anything to do with her father’s crimes.

(This is the part where she lies through grit teeth, pretends to know nothing, says nothing, because every time she hears the screams and the crying and the vulgarity with which he speaks and her world crumbles a little and the nightmares become a little too vivid and she doesn’t need that in her life right now.)

* * *

She tries, pretends to settle into normal life back at the Parkinson Estate, or what’s left of it. Her mother needs her behind the tea parties and the often put-together façade. She decides to put herself at the important position of being the family head because she’s the only reasonable person around with both feet planted firmly on the ground.

With her six NEWTs, she runs back and forth, trying to find a place that would hire her. She’s stuck with a desk job in Borgin & Burkes, because she’s a Pureblood supremacist and that’s not acceptable anymore. No one cares about the fact that she’s given up on such prejudices when the war began; all anyone cares about at the end of the day, really, is that they survive and it’s all going to be alright.

* * *

Pansy visits her father and brother in Azkaban regularly, keeping them updated of the changes in the Ministry, how she and Draco aren’t engaged anymore, and that Mother is – for the most part – alright. She bites her tongue to mention how they seem to waste away week after week, their faces almost translucent in the span of months and how speech seemed to wither away in the lack of human contact. They’re family, yes, but she doesn’t have the ever-itching need to kidnap them and run away, freeing them of the cold and the waves thundering through the iron bars.

She remembers trying to hide in Muggle coffee shops, talking to Draco because he makes her feel _warm_ and that’s the only place she ever really feels _safe_. She gets the hang of Muggle currency. She learns to tolerate loneliness. She goes to a specific café near Kensington and Chelsea almost every day only because no one really cares who she is because all she does is read, research, write the papers on the things she’s been experimenting on during work.

All that fuels her is that if Luna Lovegood had done this research, she would be praised to the high heavens instead of being a social pariah.

* * *

All in all, Pansy would say that she’s incredibly lucky. The only person who passed in the war that was of importance was Crabbe, and she never really liked him anyway.

On Saturdays, she comes over to Daphne’s for a cup of tea. They both engage in polite conversation, lullabies that turn into a comfortable silence that only the other could really understand.

One night, Pansy wakes up in cold sweat. She can’t remember much, only hot tears streaming down her face and yelling for Nott Manor and Theo rubbing her back, whispering a few words and his soothing voice lulling her to sleep.

She wakes up early in the morning to realise that love _sucks_. Like Draco, Blaise, and maybe now even Theo, the chances of her ever finding love, at least the way Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had found it, were ridiculously minute. No one would ever want to marry her due to her father’s involvement with You-Know-Who, especially not when her family name no longer has any sway.

* * *

Pansy runs, quite literally, into Ron Weasley one afternoon, if only because Blaise and Ginny are getting serious and gathered their families for lunch to celebrate such an occasion.

“ _Watch it,”_ Pansy hisses, before looking up. She then scowls when she sees that it was Draco’s childhood arch-nemesis’s best friend. She tries not to, but oh, that was so difficult when they give your first love the largest amount of grief they experienced pre-war.

“I’m sorry,” Ron replies, rubbing his arm, “there’s no need to be so rude about this, yeesh.”

“It sort of hurts, alright?” Pansy says, “you’re quite large in comparison to me.”

“I’m big compared to everyone,” he says, grumbling. He takes a deep breath, one too large to be pain-induced. “Yeah, no, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Pansy says, nonchalant, “I’m sorry too, for being rude.”

Ron’s orange eyebrows rise. “Oh wow,” he deadpans, “Pansy Parkinson apologising to me. It must be my birthday.”

“I don’t know what you know about me, Ron Weasley, but I am quite capable of human courtesies.”

 _Was that flirting?_ she asks herself. She isn’t sure; a lack of practice and general effort had worn out the charms that her mother had worked so hard to instil in her.

“Indeed I’d hope so, as you were raised in the High and Mighty House of Parkinson.”

 _Not so high and mighty now_ , she thinks, but he doesn’t need to know that. Instead, she rolls her eyes. “I think human courtesies should be a property possessed by any human being. For example, you look good today.”

This doesn’t feel like a lie, and that’s what makes her sick to her stomach. The rumpled boy she was used to seeing was now less unkempt and better dressed. Compliments had never been easy to give, genuine or not, but she has been treading uncharted waters for months. This should be no different.

“Thank you,” Ron says, positively beaming. “You look great, too.”

(This is the part when Pansy smiles.)


End file.
